It is helpful to start out this lesson with a bit of Biblical Anthropology. So first I will ask you a question: Can you define the word soul? The Greek word psuche appears a number of times in the New Testament with various meanings.
1. Soul = person
“We were in all 276 souls in the ship.” Acts 27:37
“Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities...” Romans 13:1
“...eight souls were saved through water.” I Peter 3:20
Soul = non-material aspects of mankind
“...fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28
This last passage is a clear example of a BIPARTITE DIVISION.
2. Soul = Personality
“...the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit...” Hebrews 4:12
“...may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I Thessalonians 5:23
These passages further divide the non-material person into spirit and soul, resulting in a TRIPARTITE DIVISION.
However, we should keep in mind that whichever division one pictures, it isn't as if we can clearly identify which part of us is soul/spirit and which is body. We are all of them at the same time. It is somewhat akin to the nature of Christ, who was wholly God and wholly man.
Taking a tripartite definition of “soul,” it is usually further subdivided into three aspects that make up our personality, and these are easy to memorize by considering the Wizard of Oz. Look at the supposed lacking element in each of Dorothy's friends:
scarecrow – intelligence, tin woodsman – emotions, and cowardly lion – will. As we will see in a minute, these match up fairly closely with the three points of emphasis that John makes in this letter.
1. Love, especially of Christian brothers and sisters. Key words used in these passages are “love” and “hate.” (These resonate with the emotional side of our make-up)
2. Belief, or doctrinal emphasis, especially regarding the person of Jesus Christ. The words “truth,” “liar” and “know” are especially prominent in these sections. (intellect)
3. Obedience – an ethical emphasis sometimes expressed more in terms of its opposite, “sin.” (the will to do the right thing and refrain from sinning)
All are really necessary for the integrated Christian life.
What kind of a person do you get if not all of these three aspects of the Christian life are present?
Belief Love Obedience
1. yes no no
2. yes yes no
3. yes no yes
4. no yes no
5. no yes yes
6. no no yes
1. worldly evangelicals (The title of a 1980 book)
2. cartoon of Snoopy in the snow but no one will help him – faith without works is dead
3. The “Chosen Frozen” (hard-nosed, unsympathetic Christians)
4. Beatles, New Age (all you need is love, undefined spirituality)
5. “good people,” (Mormons, liberal Christians)
6. Make up their own rules of right and wrong. (The Will to Power, Friedrich Nietzche, Hitler)
The current passage for discussion concerns one of these characteristics of a Christian: correct belief or doctrine.
I John 4:1 “Dear friends” here and “little children” in verse 4 shows the love and care the Apostle demonstrated toward his audience.
The Greek construction of this verse implies that some of the audience had believed the false spirits (“Stop believing”).
“Evil spirit” can be singular (Ephesians 2:2-3) or plural (I Timothy 4:1) in the NT. Plural “spirits” doesn't necessarily refer to multiple evil spirits, but may mean multiple false teachings or false prophets. John here is pointing out the ultimate source of these teachings. We shouldn't get hung up on the designation “prophet” since, as Raymond Brown points out, “Prophet and teacher are closely found throughout the NT, and at times they are virtually indistinguishable.”
Warnings against false teachers appear throughout the Bible, and therefore we have to keep on the lookout for departures from the truth.
Matthew 7:15 – “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
Acts 20:30 – parting words of Paul to the elders of Ephesus: “I know that after I am gone...some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them.” The Book of Revelation (2:2) indicates that the Ephesian Church listened to this warning and rejected the false teachers among them.
2 Peter 2:1 – “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions.”
The next logical question is: What basis does one use to distinguish false and true spirits?
The problem not a new one.
Deuteronomy 13:1-5: “If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you...and they say, 'Let us follow other gods' (whom you have not known) 'and let us serve them,' you must not heed the words of those prophets...”
Deuteronomy 18:22: “If a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the LORD has not spoken.” Just look at the many Christian prophecy books written in the 60's and 70's.
Didache (early 2nd Century AD): “yet not everyone that speaks in the Spirit is, but only if he has the ways of the Lord.” In other words, is he a hypocrite or does he practice what he preaches? This book also warns Christians to reject any teacher who starts to mooch off of you and asks for food or money while he is prophesying. This is a useful criterion to use when viewing some TV preachers.
Paul gives some additional information regarding testing in which he seems to imply that each congregation has been given the gifts to allow it to withstand false teachings. (discernment, prophecy, teaching)
I Corinthians 12:10 “the discernment of spirits” is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit
I Corinthians 14:29 “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.”
I Thessalonians 5:19-21 – “ Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything, hold fast to what is good.”
I John 4:2-3a John has an additional test found in these verses in which he is dealing with the heresy that says Jesus is divine but not human.
Three general observations regarding this test: (a) The test is not in outward signs and miracles but in their teachings, (b) It can't be taken as the only test of a teacher from God since this test can't be divorced from the other signs of a Christian in this letter – love and keeping God's commandments, (c) New Bible Commentary – “The emphasis is on the Person not the proposition,” that is, the wording of confession indicates personal allegiance to Jesus.
What does it mean that Jesus came in the flesh? The true union of the Eternal Word with a human personality of Jesus is to be distinguished from the belief that Jesus was merely adopted as God's Son at his baptism or that God's Spirit only inhabited Jesus' body temporarily. There is a lot of doctrinal meat packed into these verses. “Has come” implies he is still in the flesh – indication of a belief in his bodily resurrection as well as his pre-existence.
John repeats the wording of this confession in II John 7.
A possible variant reading of the last phrase actually says that those who do not confess are “annulling (doing away with, dissolving, or cursing) Christ.” Paul teaches something similar when he says in I Corinthians 12:3: “...no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says 'Let Jesus be cursed!' and no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit.”
The controversy over the person of Christ has been with us since the beginning of Christianity and is with us today. Brief history of heresy:
Cerinthus of Ephesus (ca. 100 AD) – According to church tradition, he clashed with the Apostle John who fled from a bath house when he was told that Cerinthus was there. Cerinthus' teaching was that the spirit of Christ guided Jesus from his baptism to just before his crucifixion, and then left him. Many of heretical teachings reflect different aspects of Gnosticism. It was the most dangerous rival of Christianity in 2nd cent. AD. Gnosticism denied the statement in Genesis 1 that the physical earth was good.
Basilides (died ca. 140) – said that Simon of Cyrene was crucified in Christ's place. Islamic teaching is similar, but substitutes Judas Iscariot on cross.
Docetists (2nd cent.) – Jesus was only spirit; never suffered. Rosicrucianism, Christian Science
Ebionites (2nd cent.) – Opposite heresy; Jesus was only man. Unitarianism, liberal theology
Arius (256-336) -- taught that only God the Father was divine by nature; Christ was a created being.
The Council of Nicaea (325) convened because of Arian controversy and stated “ one Lord Jesus Christ...true God of true God..who was made flesh...and became man.”
Jehovah Witnesses – Jesus is divine but he is not God. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a god.” (New World Translation)
Church of Latter Day Saints – Even God is not uniquely divine. “As we now are, God once was. As God now is, we may become.” (Brigham Young) Note that this is an echo of the serpent's words to Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Q – Does it really matter whether Christ was wholly human, wholly divine, or both?
I John 4:4-6
The pronouns you, they and we are all emphatic in the Greek. “They” refers back to false teachers. “We” = John's community or the apostles.
v. 4 Overcoming (a favorite word of John in Revelation) is not due to their own effort but by Christ's conquest over the world. The verb in the perfect tense indicates continuous action, not a one-time event. John's audience could distinguish truth from falsehood. Not because they were smarter than others, but like little children they trusted the spirit of God within them to lead them to the truth. (“The one who is in you” is not specified, but probably refers to the Holy Spirit.)
Many Christians exhibit a defeatist attitude and are constantly stressing how bad things are today. This is not really consistent with the attitude we are demonstrate: we are conquerors. Remember Elisha's comment when he was surrounded by a hostile army: “Fear not, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” (II Kings 6:16) He was then shown God's invisible army.
v. 5 “World” appears three times in this verse. There is a different meaning than in vv. 1 and 3 where it has the neutral meaning of the place of human dwelling. Here, it has a negative meaning. “World” means both mankind united in opposition to God and the evil attitude characteristic of such people. Satan rules in that realm as prince. John 12:31 – prince of this world, II Corinthians 4:4 – god of this world. “World” in these instances is sometime translated as “age.”
One test of a prophet from God that is certainly not taught by John is their success in winning followers. Like H. L. Mencken's famous cynical saying : “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” The same thing can be said about the spiritual realm. My next door neighbor when I first moved to a new town tried to get us to attend his church because he said it was the biggest one in town and they even broadcast their services on TV. That is not necessarily a fool-proof test of true Christian teaching, because the world tends to listen to false teachers –WHY?
“For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” (2 Timothy. 4:3-4)
“The philosophy of false teachers accommodates itself to the prevailing climate of opinion in the world.” -- F. F. Bruce.
v. 6 This time the test is applied to John's audience, and by extension, to all of us today – true believers listen to what God and the writers He inspired have said. This must be an important truth for John since at least five times in his gospel, John preserves the words of Jesus teaching the same thing.
John 8:47: “...he who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
John 10:4-5 – The Good Shepherd “The sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”
John 10:27 – “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”
John 14:17 – “This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
John 18:37 – “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
Someone has said, “God wrote the Bible as a love letter to His people.
If you don't understand it, it's because you are reading someone else's mail.” This comment and the above passages could be construed as teaching predestination. It is not predestination, but “dualism of decision,” in Raymond Brown's words.
If you don't understand it, it's because you are reading someone else's mail.” This comment and these passages could be construed as teaching predestination. It is not predestination, but “dualism of decision,” in Raymond Brown's words
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